The Overbooked Bibliophile

Rating:  3.5⭐ ”The world went on in spite of its prisoners.” Set in 2014, Florida  A Season of Light  by  Julie Iromuanya  revolves around a  Nigerian immigrant  family: Fidelis Ewirike- a barrister and former POW of the Nigerian Civil War and his wife Adaobi, an educator and their children sixteen-year-old daughter Amarachi, “Amara” and fourteen-year-old son Chukwudiegwu “Chuk". News of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping in Borno State, Nigeria, triggers a traumatic response in Fidelis, taking him back to the year he spent fighting the Civil War in Nigeria and the tragedy that befell his family and the disappearance of his younger sister Ugochi. His sense of past and present blurred, concern for his daughter’s safety prompts Fidelis to lock Amara, who bears a strong resemblance to Ugochi, in her room keeping her from leaving the house. Though he makes a point of attending to her needs, he offers no explanation or justification for his actions. We follo...

  Rating:3.5⭐ Set in the remote South Calabrian village of Santa Chionia in 1960,  The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia  by  Juliet Grames . follows twenty-seven-year-old American (of Calabrian and Norwegian descent), Francesca Loftfield, and the time she spent in the village in her efforts to open a nursery school funded by an international charity. Francesca estranged from her husband after a personal loss, is an educated, idealistic young woman who, despite having led a sheltered life, is motivated to take the assignment in the remote rustic village. Her job entails opening a nursery school and enrolling thirty-six pupils while also recruiting suitable candidates as teachers from the local community - not an easy task, trying to have her voice heard among those in a tight-knit community with their set ways. Complicating matters further is the fact that a human skeleton was recently discovered under the rubble of the old post office after flooding and Francesca is approac...

Rating:  4.25⭐️ Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of reading Elizabeth Crook’s  The Madstone , which features then nineteen-year-old Benjamin Shreve as he recounts the sixteen-day odyssey across Reconstuction-era Texas and the perils he faces in his efforts to assist a stranded traveler and a pregnant woman and her young son. I found Benjamin to be an endearing character and was thrilled to find out that the author had previously penned a novel featuring Benjamin and his half-sister. I was eager to read  The Which Way Tree  and I’m glad to say that I was not disappointed! The narrative is presented in epistolary format through letters written by seventeen-year-old Benjamin in 1866, addressed to Judge E. Carlton, as a part of his testimony against one Clarence Hanlin, believed to be responsible for the murder of eight travelers. In the course of his testimony on his several encounters with Hanlin, Benjamin, excited to be able to share his story, drafts a series of...

Rating: 4.5⭐ “You said that when a civilization tells stories about itself, it starts with myths, dealing with gods and monsters. Then, when that civilization develops, it moves on to history, telling stories of important personages who achieved great things. When it moves into the modern era, it becomes increasingly interested in the lives of regular people, their thoughts and feelings. You described it as the movement from myth to history to life.” The Melancholy of Untold History  by  Minsoo Kang  is a unique and creative work of fiction and an ode to storytelling that revolves around how the interpretation of myth and history define a civilization and its beliefs. An ancient storyteller who realizes that his gift is the only thing that is keeping him from being executed by his captors; four divine deities who from their perch in the mountains shape the fate of the realm below as a consequence of their actions; a prolific historian who accomplished the unimaginable fea...

  Rating:  4.5⭐️ The Same Bright Stars   by  Ethan Joella   revolves around Jack Schmidt, the fifty-two-year-old owner of a beachfront restaurant in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, that has been in the family for three generations. We follow Jack as he ponders over his options of continuing with the restaurant that he has devoted his life to or accepting the offer made to him by a large restaurant corporation to buy him out. Jack is compelled to takes stock of his life and contemplate what a future without the restaurant, which is his family legacy could look like, while also considering how his decision would affect his employees who Jack cares deeply about and the local community which considers Schmidt’s a local beacon. Jack is single, has never been married and has never ventured outside his community after college but is conflicted about his decision, emotionally exhausted and feels the need for freedom from the responsibilities he has prioritized his whole adult...

  Rating:  4.5⭐ “None would yet know of the evolving tragedy that would be their lives.” 1975, Monta Clare, Missouri: An act of bravery becomes a defining point in the lives of thirteen-year-old Joseph “Patch” Macauley and those close to him. As the narrative progresses, we follow Patch, his best friend Saint and Misty, the girl he saved, and the important people in their lives and their community for over two decades. While the dynamics within the once close-knit community will never be the same again, the trauma they experience as children follows Patch, Saint and Misty through the years, manifesting in the choices they make and leaving them to grapple with the consequences that follow. All the Colors of the Dark  i s my third  Chris Whitaker   novel after  We Begin at the End , which remains my favorite to date, and  Tall Oaks. In his latest offering, the author has woven elements of literary fiction, coming-of-age, a love story and a crime procedur...

  Rating: 4.5⭐ Set in the mid-1990s, in the small Irish town of Ardglas, County Donegal,  The Coast Road  by Alan Murrin tells the story of three women navigating troubled marriages in an era before divorce was legalized. Colette Crowley, a published poet, has returned from Dublin after a failed love affair. Married with three children, she is separated from her husband Shaun, whom she left after falling in love with another man. She is eager to reconnect with her children, but her husband is not allowing her to do so. With no income and no place to live, she rents a cottage near the coast, from Donal and Dolores Mullen. Dolores has three children and is expecting her fourth. Her husband is mostly critical of her and does not extend her much kindness. Despite being aware of her husband’s infidelity, she has no option but to turn a blind eye to his affairs. Colette also starts writing classes where she strikes up a friendship with Izzy Keaveney, the wife of a local politic...

  Rating: 4.5⭐ With exquisite prose, dark humor, complex characters and a gripping narrative that revolves around themes of grief, trauma, fatherhood, racial identity and legacy, I found  Devil Is Fine  by  John Vercher  hard to put down. As the novel begins, we meet our unnamed narrator/protagonist, a biracial author born to a White mother and Black father, grappling with the recent loss of his teenage son Malcolm. When he inherits a plot of land from his estranged maternal grandfather, he wants nothing to do with the property and travels south to initiate all necessary formalities for its sale. However, a routine inspection of the land leads to a shocking discovery. As the dark history of the land and his ancestors is gradually revealed, our protagonist is traumatized by the implications. Adding to his grief and pain are his strained personal relationships and the stress brought on by the fact that his latest manuscript isn’t generating much interest among pub...

Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sandwich  by  Catherine Newman  follows fifty-four-year-old Rachel or “Rocky” as is called by those close to her, over the course of her annual family trip to Cape Cod. We meet her husband Nick, her adult children – daughter Willa, son Jamie and his girlfriend Maya and her elderly parents also join them for a few days in their rental cottage. There is a lot to manage and Rocky is the middle of it all. We follow her as she navigates the demands of her family, her own struggles with bouts of melancholy and mood swings (not to mention the hot flashes) brought on by menopause and is often overwhelmed by memories of the years gone by – some happy and some not so much. The narrative is presented from Rocky’s first-person PoV and spans a week in the characters’ lives, with past events being shared as flashbacks as present-day events evoke nostalgia and Rocky is reminded of past events. The pacing is on the slower side, which suits the nature of the story. This is a s...

  Rating: 3.5⭐️ With complex characters and an immersive setting,  Middletide  by  Sarah Crouch  is an interesting character-driven novel with an intriguing mystery at its core. Set in the small town of Point Orchards, Washington, the novel begins in 1994 with the discovery of the body of Dr. Erin Landry hanging from a tree on the property of Elijah Leith. Elijah had been living alone in his late parents’ cabin after returning to his hometown in 1988, after his first novel failed to launch his literary career. Elijah hopes to rekindle his relationship with his former high school sweetheart, Nakita, whom he had left to pursue his dreams of becoming an author, breaking his promise to return after four years. Nakita, grieving the recent loss of her husband, isn’t quite ready to move on. Elijah was also friends with Dr. Landry, whose marriage collapsed after the death of her young daughter in a road accident. Erin’s death is initially ruled a suicide, but when Sheri...

  Rating: 4.5⭐ “I feel nostalgic, nostalgic for what I’ve not yet lived.” Set in the small town of Milly, France,  Forgotten on Sunday  by  Valérie Perrin  (translated by  Hildegarde Serle ) revolves around twenty-one-year-old Justine Neige, a nursing assistant working at a retirement home named The Hydrangeas. Justine is an orphan, raised by her grandparents with her cousin Jules, after their parents perished in a road accident when they were children. She is close to Jules, whom she considers more her brother than cousin. In terms of personal relationships, she chooses to indulge in casual flings and consciously shies away from deeper romantic relationships. She genuinely enjoys her job caring for the elderly and spends much of her time listening to their stories. She is particularly close to ninety-six-year-old Hélène Hel. Encouraged by Hélène’s grandson, Justine begins to write Hélène’s story – her love for Lucien, the WWII years, and the events and cho...

  Rating:  4.5⭐️ Dark, gritty and certainly not for the faint of heart,  The Borrowed Hills  by  Scott Preston  is a stunning debut. The novel opens in the Cumbrian fells in 2001 and revolves around the lives of the sheep farmers whose fortunes take a turn for the worse when their flocks are afflicted by foot and mouth disease. Among the farms affected is a smallholding belonging to Steve Elliman’s father. Steve, our narrator, had left his family home in search of other opportunities but returned to help his elderly father. But when his flock is afflicted by the deadly disease, he is forced to conform to government regulations. He meets William Herne, the owner of a larger farm. William managed to separate his sick sheep from his healthy flock by hiding them away. Steve tries to help him, but they are unable to save the flock. Steve leaves but returns after he receives news of the death of his father. William is now embroiled with a shady character by the n...

  Rating:  4.5⭐️ Long Island  by Colm Tóibín   continues with the story of Eilis Lacey, our protagonist from  Brooklyn . Set twenty years after the events of the first novel, Eilis, now in her forties, is the wife of Italian plumber Tony Fiorelli, whom we met in the first book. Parents to two teenagers, daughter Rossella and sixteen-year-old son Larry they have settled in Long Island in a cul-de-sac with Tony’s parents and two of her husband’s three brothers and their families as neighbors. Despite being a close-knit family and Eilis sharing a good relationship with everybody, she is conscious of how different she is from her close-knit extended family. The differences become more pronounced when Tony’s actions push their marriage into a downward spiral, and she feels his family isn’t supportive of her or her wishes. Eilis hasn’t been back to Ireland in twenty years, but feeling the need to distance herself from Tony and his family, decides to visit he...

Rating: 3.75 Told through alternating perspectives of several residents in a series of interconnected fragments,  Liquid, Fragile, Perishable   by   Carolyn Kuebler   is a quiet, slower-paced, character-driven novel that paints a compelling portrait of life in a small England town. The story begins in the summer that the Calper family moves to Glenville from New York. Willoughby “Will” Calper, set to attend college after the summer is over, falls in love with Honey Mitchell, the teenage daughter of a family of beekeepers. Honey is homeschooled, her family old-school, and their involvement, which they hide from their respective families, is only one of a series of events that send a ripple through the close-knit community. The narrative takes us into the hearts and minds of the residents over the course of year, not just Honey and Will and their families but also Honey’s friends, older and younger residents of the community, families that form the backbone of the comm...

Rating:⭐⭐⭐ Ambitious in scope, spanning the post-WWII years to the present day,  Last House  by  Jessica Shattuck  is a sweeping family saga that follows the fates and fortunes of the members of an American family. The story opens in 1953, where we meet WWII veteran thirty-year-old Nick Taylor, employed as a lawyer with American Oil, a part of a team visiting the Middle East along with a former Yale classmate Carter Weston, who “worked for the government” and whose area of expertise overlapped with Nick’s company’s agenda. With the growth of the oil industry in the United States, Nick’s career flourishes, affording his family financial security and material comforts including a vacation home in Vermont – a choice destination for many of his friends and colleagues. As the narrative progresses, we follow Nick, his wife Bet and his children Katherine and Harry - their hopes, aspirations, regrets and the consequences of the choices they make. “Last House” – their home is...

  Rating: 3.75⭐ Touching upon themes of social class and inequality, ambition, family, friendship, gender identity and sexuality, abuse, guilt and grief, I found  Women and Children First  by  Alina Grabowski  is an impressive debut novel. “Your choices have to mean something, even if they mean something terrible.” The tragic death of a local teenager at a house party sends shockwaves through the small (fictional) town of Nashquitten, Massachusetts. Structured in ten chapters ( each from a different character’s perspective) in total, divided into five “pre” and five “post” Lucy’s death, this is a slow-moving yet immersive character-driven novel. Among the voices we here from are : a sixteen-year-old who went to school with Lucy and worked with her cousin and was in a romantic relationship with a teacher; a guidance counselor who tries to do right by her students only to have her concerns dismissed by the school principal who is unaware or rather chooses to ignor...